Page 144 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 11 February 2015
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MADAM SPEAKER: For Mr Barr.
MR HANSON: For Mr Barr, who thinks that, like Wayne Swan, he is the world’s greatest treasurer. But when we actually look at the record of Mr Barr since he became Treasurer, what we see is record deficits for the ACT—in fact, as Mr Smyth has pointed out, record deficits in the context of the nation. If delivering massive record deficits is a point of pride for Mr Barr, and I do not think it is—
Mr Smyth: No, it is not.
MR HANSON: No, it is not, is it? He seems to be justifying it and then defending it. It is a very odd position he is in. The net debt seems to have exploded under this minister. We had a very low debt till he became Treasurer. It has exploded. Borrowings, again, under this Treasurer have exploded. Interest payments have exploded under this Treasurer. Mr Barr likes to make parallels with the Liberals and what we might be like. But what we see is the Wayne Swan treasury approach, which is to borrow, to put your jurisdiction into massive debt and deficit but always to promise a surplus just beyond the next election. There is this miraculous surplus that appears after the next election.
I have been trying to fathom what Mr Barr means by fiscal Darwinism. I had not taken Mr Barr for a creationist before, but perhaps what he is talking about is the miracle surplus that he purports will be delivered. The reality is that this is a man who has only delivered deficit, who has only delivered greater debt, who has only delivered greater interest payments in every single one of the budgets that he has delivered. That is the reality. That is the reality and I can guarantee you that whilst this man remains Treasurer that will continue.
But he expects the community to believe that just over the horizon of the next election there will be this sunshine of surplus. Does anyone believe that? I do not think anyone believed Wayne Swan. In fact, when it came to the reality, what we saw, rather than the surplus that Wayne Swan had promised, was about $50 billion of deficit. Mr Barr is looking for his miracle. It will not come unless there is a Liberal government and Mr Smyth can take control of the purse strings of this jurisdiction.
Mr Barr is struggling for ideas. He is saying: “Where are the ideas? Where could we create more wealth? Where could we make cuts to expenditure? What ideas have you got, Canberra Liberals?” Let us get rid of capital metro. There are tens of millions of dollars being expended in the budget right now on capital metro that we would not expend—tens of millions of dollars; and, as forecast, what is coming is hundreds of millions of dollars that do not need to be spent.
There you go, Madam Speaker. There are some ideas for you. There are tens of millions of dollars of ideas. There have been these solar and wind projects that we have seen coming forward from this government that we know are not just hurting the budget but hurting every single Canberra household when they turn on the light switch.
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